NJTC Venture Conference Winners Mostly from New Jersey
This past Tuesday, the New Jersey Technology Council held its annual Venture Conference in Iselin, N.J. The day was filled with networking and some valuable advice from Gary Vaynerchuk, whose enthusiastic keynote and genuine willingness to help audience members made it a memorable event. There was a packed house at the conference with more than 500 people attending.
Some 44 companies exhibited on the Venture Conference floor and and pitched their startups in short pitches. Winners were announced at the end of the event, after deliberation by judges. This year New Jersey companies took all of the awards but one.
The Winners:
Best Life Sciences Company: Infarct Reduction Technologies
Infarct Reduction Technologies (Waldwick) This company has an automated pressure cuff that delivers what is called ischemic conditioning. This 40-minute therapy saves lives after a heart attack but is seldom applied because someone must do it manually. The therapy works by alternating the blocking of blood flow for five minutes and then allowing flow to resume for another 5 minutes.
Best Information Technology Company: Pendo Systems
Pendo Systems (Montclair) is a company that solves a problem faced by financial institutions, which may not have a strong handle on their exposure to any asset class in real time. Securities position data remains hostage in legacy infrastructure, the company said. Pendo’s systems combine advanced securities data modeling with semantic data intelligence.
Best Green Company: Gridless Power
Gridless Power (Collingswood) has a portable battery product aimed at businesses. It can power electronics, lighting, and powertools. The company also has an online platform called The Gridless Cloud that monitors power equipment in the field for large users.
Best Early Stage Company: iubble inc.
The company iubble (Hoboken) has a new web browser that organizes and shares content in an easy and intuitive way. The company was founded by students and a professor at Stevens Institute of Technology and the founders believe the browser’s viral nature will allow it to disrupt Google Chrome, Microsoft Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox.
Best Management Team: Prevalent Networks
Prevalent Networks (Warren) already has more than 30 employees. The enterprise information security software firm is addressing the problem many retailers and others have: cyber attacks coming through vulnerabilities at third party vendors. Prevalent has a Vendor Risk Manager Platform, a Vendor Threat Monitor Service, and another product called Vendor Assess Managed Service.
Company Most Likely to Succeed: Talentrackr, Inc.
Talenttrackr (New York) has a B2B SaaS cloud platform aimed at human resource talent acquisition. The company says the solution optimizes the speed and quality of hiring, including video interviewing, test/assessment, social media integration, mobile device engagement and big data analytics. It offers automatic candidate profile matching using proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms.
Most Innovative Product/Service: EventCombo
EventCombo (Englewood Cliffs) wants to challenge Eventbrite in the event marketplace, by using ticketing as a trigger to provide a marketing platform. Users will be prompted to buy add-ons such as parking, souvenirs and dinner after the event, to name a few examples.
Investors’ Choice: FUSAR Technologies, Inc.
Techlaunch graduate FUSAR Technologies (Jersey City) is developing advanced wearable technology. The company’s first product is the Guardian smart helmet, an intelligent, connected motorcycle helmet powered by the company’s patent-pending Street Smart System, a computing platform designed specifically for use in helmets.
Peoples’ Choice: Wellth
Tigerlabs Digital Health Accelerator company Wellth (Princeton) allows patients to be rewarded for improving their health. The company says it is able to calculate the future cost savings to the health insurance company, and allows the patient and the insurance company to share these future savings. The company says it has an enterprise facing big data analytics platform for health insurers and a simple mobile app for consumers.